Teams look beyond Tenable when the price steps from a single Nessus licence to per-asset platform counting, when web applications need a second product, or when they want a scanner they can run on their own hardware. The alternatives below include self-hosted network scanners, European platforms, web application specialists and pipeline tools.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management in our vulnerability scanning ranking are Greenbone, Holm Security and Intruder. The first three places are kept for challengers when the category has enough of them; the best-known brands come after that, in ranked order. Choose Greenbone if network results must stay inside your own premises and you mainly scan hosts and devices. All 11 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Vulnerability Scanner in 2026, and each says where it differs from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management.
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Pricing: Nessus Professional 4,790 dollars per licence per year, published; platform per asset, published up to 250 assets
Established in: United States
Built for: Infrastructure teams that want the widest check coverage available
Not for: Buyers wanting one tool to cover apps and dependencies
01
Why buyers look past Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management
01
Web application scanning is a separate purchase
Tenable's Nessus pages say a licence covers web application scans for 5 FQDNs, and that Tenable Web App Scanning is its own product at $3,578 a year for 5 FQDNs. A team with a few dozen sites therefore prices network scanning and web scanning on two different meters.
02
Counting moves from licences to assets
Nessus Professional is $4,790 for one year, with the same features in the $6,790 Expert edition, and the multi-year options save only a few percent. The managed Vulnerability Management page opens at 100 assets for $3,500 a year and defines an asset as a device, a web application with an FQDN or an active cloud resource. Growth in any of those raises the bill.
03
Support and training are extra lines
The Nessus purchase page lists Advanced Support at $400 for phone and chat, and training at $275 for one person. Phone support covers up to ten named contacts and is run in English. Those are small sums, but they show that the headline licence is not the full cost of running it as a team tool.
authenticated, script-heavy applications are the main target and you need self-hosting
#12
03
What each one does differently
1
Greenbone
Germany · Published
Greenbone keeps the whole engine on hardware or a virtual machine you control. OPENVAS BASIC is offered with a 14-day test at no charge, and the vendor's Enterprise Feed holds more than 100,000 vulnerability tests with additions each day. Its pages show ISO 9001, 14001 and 27001 certificates. Application scanning is not what it is known for.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if network results must stay inside your own premises and you mainly scan hosts and devices.
Holm Security puts system and network scanning, web applications, APIs, cloud accounts and attack surface discovery into one platform, with Active Directory and Microsoft 365 checks as features. Phishing simulation sits beside them. The site speaks of keeping sensitive data in Europe, but we did not find hosting regions or a price on the page we read.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if you want a Nordic supplier covering hosts, web and cloud under one contract.
Intruder offers a free plan with 5 web apps, weekly external scans and 3 users, and a 14-day trial of the Cloud plan. Internal scanning with agents starts on Pro. Plans combine a base fee with a small fee per target, and pentests are listed from $3,500. The free tier makes it the cheapest way to test whether external-only scanning is enough.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if your exposure is mostly internet-facing and you want to trial it before talking to anyone.
Outpost24 is a Swedish group selling scanning, application testing and attack surface products as separate modules, with a managed service available on top. Its site refused our automated request, so we cannot quote prices, limits or hosting from it. Expect a quote for the combination rather than a price per licence.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if a single European supplier for several security modules matters more than a published price.
AppCheck, registered in England and Wales and showing an ISO 27001 certificate, scans web applications, APIs and internal or external infrastructure. GoScript lets you describe multi-step user journeys, and its licences are described as covering unlimited scans and unlimited users. The VulnFeed database is said to update hourly. The page offers a free scan request without stating terms.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if you pay Tenable for infrastructure but your real gaps are logged-in web applications.
Pentest-Tools.com sells three plans by the month: NetScan from $96 for 16 assets, AppScan from $140 for 5 and Exploit from $190 for 5, with yearly billing paying for ten months. Every paid plan has unlimited rescans and team members. Internal network scanning is an add-on, and the free edition stops at 5 assets.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if one or two people run periodic assessments and need reports they can hand to a client.
Detectify charges an annual platform fee: Starter at no cost for up to 5 users, Standard from €2,500, Professional from €5,000 and Enterprise from €15,000, then extra for domains and scan targets. One internal agent arrives with Professional, three with Enterprise. API scanning for REST and GraphQL is in every tier.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if the public web estate is the worry and you can live without host scanning.
ProjectDiscovery publishes the open-source tools Nuclei, Subfinder, HTTPx and Naabu, and sells a hosted platform on top. Its free plan allows one seat with limited one-time usage; pay as you go is $200 per seat a month for up to five seats. We did not find a licence statement on the pricing page.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if your engineers would rather write and read their own checks than buy a feed.
Aikido Security is a Belgian product aimed at code and cloud, not hosts. The free Developer plan allows 2 users and 10 repositories; Basic is $300 a month with 10 users, and Pro adds on-prem and VM scanning. The page lists Advanced at the same price as Pro, so confirm it. Pentests start at $4,000.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if developers own the backlog and the findings you care about sit in repositories and containers.
StackHawk's Wingman plan costs $10 per user a month with unlimited apps and 50 scans per user monthly, after a 14-day trial with no card. It drives scans from coding assistants such as Claude Code and Cursor and reports clean or not clean to CI. Scale, with roles, SSO and discovery, is quoted.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if you want every pull request tested against a running application and API.
Burp Suite DAST from PortSwigger uses the same engine as Burp Suite Professional and crawls JavaScript applications with a Chromium-based crawler. It can run as managed cloud, self-hosted on Windows or Linux, or on Kubernetes, including air-gapped. Access roles, SAML SSO and many CI and ticketing connectors are listed. Prices are not on the page.
Switch from Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management if authenticated, script-heavy applications are the main target and you need self-hosting.
You want scan results to stay on your own premises
Greenbone: OPENVAS BASIC can be tested for 14 days, and the Enterprise Feed holds over 100,000 vulnerability tests.
02
You want to try a scanner for free before buying
Intruder: The free plan covers 5 web apps and weekly external scans, and a 14-day trial of Cloud adds more.
03
You pay by the month and want client-ready reports
Pentest-Tools.com: NetScan starts at $96 a month for 16 assets, and paid plans include unlimited rescans and team members.
04
Your applications need testing behind logins and in CI
Burp Suite DAST: It crawls authenticated JavaScript applications, integrates with Jenkins, GitHub Actions and GitLab CI, and can be self-hosted.
05
You want one Nordic supplier for hosts, web and cloud
Holm Security: Its platform covers systems, web applications, APIs and cloud accounts, with Active Directory and Microsoft 365 checks as features.
04
When Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management is still the right choice
Tenable remains the better choice when host and network coverage is the job. Nessus Professional is openly priced, covers configuration and compliance audits with more than 450 policies and templates, and Tenable's pages describe CVSS, EPSS and VPR scoring, bi-directional ticketing and a 99.95% uptime SLA on the managed platform. For on-premises or air-gapped needs it also points to Security Center and Enclave Security. If one scanner already covers your estate, a split across several smaller tools can cost more in integration work than it saves.
05
What moving off Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management involves
01
Inventory scan policies and credentials
List the scan templates, compliance audits and credential sets you use in Nessus or the managed platform. Credentialed host scans are the part hardest to reproduce, so check each candidate against your operating systems before you compare prices.
02
Export history before the licence ends
Download reports and findings you need for audits, and record which findings were accepted as risks. A new tool starts with an empty history, so decide who keeps the old record.
03
Run both side by side for one cycle
Scan the same subnet and the same applications with the old and new tool for a full cycle. Compare what each finds, then cancel.
06
Questions about replacing Tenable Nessus and Vulnerability Management
6 answers
What is the best alternative to Tenable Nessus?
Greenbone ranks first in our list. It scans networks and hosts from an appliance or virtual machine you run yourself, offers a 14-day test of OPENVAS BASIC, and its Enterprise Feed holds over 100,000 vulnerability tests.
Holm Security and Intruder follow for teams that want a hosted service.
Is there a free alternative to Nessus?
Intruder has a free plan with 5 web apps, weekly external scans and 3 users. Detectify's Starter plan is free for up to 5 users, and Aikido has a free Developer plan for 2 users.
ProjectDiscovery's open-source tools are the option for those who write their own checks.
Which alternative to Tenable scans web applications better?
AppCheck, Detectify and Burp Suite DAST are built around web applications, and Pentest-Tools.com offers AppScan from $140 a month. Tenable sells Web App Scanning separately at $3,578 a year for 5 FQDNs, so compare on the number of sites you have.
Can I self-host a replacement for Nessus?
Greenbone is designed for that, as an appliance or virtual machine. Burp Suite DAST can run self-hosted on Windows, Linux or Kubernetes. ProjectDiscovery's Nuclei runs from your own machine, while its enterprise plan lists on-prem or dedicated VPC deployment.
Which Tenable alternative suits a small company with no security team?
Intruder publishes a free plan and a trial, and Pentest-Tools.com starts at $96 a month with unlimited team members. Both focus on external exposure, so a company with many internal servers should check the internal scanning options first.
What does Tenable's platform cost compared with Nessus Professional?
Nessus Professional is $4,790 for one year. Tenable One Vulnerability Management showed 100 assets at $3,500 a year when we looked, and Web App Scanning is a further $3,578 for 5 FQDNs. The platform is counted per asset, so the total depends on your estate.
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Sources
Checked 3 November 2026
Tenable Nessus: Nessus Professional $4,790 and Expert $6,790 per year, multi-year options, Advanced Support $400, training $275, 5 FQDN web app scans, Web App Scanning $3,578 for 5 FQDNs, trials.
Tenable Nessus Professional: 450+ policies and templates, CVSS, EPSS and VPR scoring, free trial, Vulnerability Management 100 assets at $3,500.
Tenable Vulnerability Management: Definition of an asset, cloud management on AWS, 99.95% uptime SLA, Security Center and Enclave Security for on-premises, bi-directional ticketing.
Greenbone: OPENVAS BASIC, 14-day test, Enterprise Feed over 100,000 tests, ISO certificates; price not shown on the page we read.
Holm Security: Systems and networks, web applications, cloud, APIs, phishing simulation, Active Directory and Microsoft 365 features, statement on data in Europe.
Intruder pricing: Free plan contents, 14-day trial, internal scanning on Pro and Enterprise, pentests from $3,500.
Outpost24: Page refused our automated request; no figures quoted from it.
AppCheck: Web, API and infrastructure scanning, GoScript, hourly VulnFeed, unlimited scans and users, registered in England and Wales, ISO 27001 certificate.
Pentest-Tools.com pricing: Free, NetScan $96, AppScan $140, Exploit $190 per month, 10 months paid on yearly billing, unlimited rescans and team members, internal scanning add-on.
Detectify pricing: Starter, Standard, Professional and Enterprise platform fees, internal agents, extra charges per domain and target.
ProjectDiscovery pricing: Free plan, pay as you go $200 per seat, enterprise on-prem or dedicated VPC, open-source tools listed.
Aikido pricing: Developer free plan, Basic $300 and Pro $600 per month, Advanced listed at $600, pentests from $4,000.
StackHawk pricing: Wingman $10 per user per month, 50 scans per user, 14-day trial, Scale quoted, coding assistant support.
Burp Suite DAST: Chromium crawler, same engine as Burp Suite Professional, deployment options, CI and ticketing integrations, SAML SSO, no prices shown.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Author and fact-checker: Sebastiaan Smits. This page was last reviewed on 3 November 2026; our review process is public.
